A drive along Interstate 95 in Philadelphia is essentially a billboard tour of personal injury law firms, all using the city’s most stereotypical catchphrases to corner the market on misfortune.
About a year ago, Philadelphia Magazine’s Tom McGrath counted 30 different billboards for personal injury lawyers along the I-95 corridor. The industry’s marketing budgets have enabled firms to blitz highway billboards, radio airwaves and SEPTA buses with ads that plant the seeds of striking it rich with a lawsuit.
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Amid the usual suspects on I-95 — Pond Lehocky, Morgan & Morgan, TopDog and Krasno, Krasno & Onwudinjo, to name a few — there’s now a satirical billboard advertising Fergie’s Pub on Sansom Street in Center City. Bar owners Fergus Carey and Jim McNamara tower above the highway at Wildey and Columbia streets in Fishtown, pointing toward motorists with stern expressions on their faces.
Provided Image/Fergus Carey
Fergie’s Pub, the Center City bar that’s been around since 1994, has a new billboard on Interstate 95 that pokes fun at the highway’s slew of ads for personal injury law firms.
“Injured?” the billboard says. “Do not call these guys. They’re not even lawyers. They actually own a bar!”
Carey, who lives in Fishtown, said he’s whizzed past the onslaught of personal injury lawyer billboards for years. More recently, he noticed the frenzy had devolved into self-parody.
“It’s crazy,” Carey said Wednesday. “There’s one company and theirs says, ‘Don’t choose a lawyer based on a billboard,’ which is f—ing brilliant.”
Carey and McNamara were both well-dressed one day and decided to seize the moment. They asked for someone to take their picture, and voila, they had the makings of their billboard. At first, they placed the ad in Metro Philadelphia newspapers for laughs. Carey inquired about a billboard on I-95, but kept getting quotes that were too high to make the splurge.
“This guy who used to live around the corner from Fergie’s reached out and said, ‘I can make that a reality,'” Carey said. “He took the ball. He sent me proposals and pricing, and it turned out to be a lot more reasonable than I had ever imagined.”
Carey declined to say how much the billboard cost.
“It wasn’t that heavy,” he said.
When the billboard went up March 2, the chef at Fergie’s Pub started getting texts from his friends in Fishtown.
“They were messaging him saying, ‘Your bosses are effing nuts,'” Carey said. “And he said that’s the highest compliment you could get.”
A lawyer who stopped by Fergie’s told Carey he’d heard about the billboard from a colleague.
“One of his younger lawyers was like, ‘He’s making fun of our careers,'” Carey said. “And his boss told him, ‘Shut up.'”
Carey grew up in Dublin, Ireland and moved to Philadelphia in 1987, starting out as a bartender at McGlinchey’s. He opened Fergie’s Pub in 1994 with his late friend, Wajhi Ahbed, and had a hand in launching Monk’s Cafe and Grace Tavern. In addition to Fergie’s, Carey and McNamara now co-own the Goat Rittenhouse and The Jim bar in South Philly. The Monto, their newest bar, will open in April in the former Mac’s Tavern space on Market Street in Old City.
Carey said he leads tourist trips from Philly to Ireland in the spring and fall. On rides to and from the airport, he expects his travelers to get a good glimpse of the billboard on I-95. He’s hopeful it will bring people out to Fergie’s for St. Patrick’s Day and drive business to the bar.
“I think it’ll bring attention to us,” Carey said. “I’m not doing it for the good of my health. It’s to keep our name out there and drive business. We’ve been here for 31 years, we’re busier than ever. I’m 62. Half my life has been spent at Fergie’s Pub. We’re just keeping it relevant, keeping it fresh and having a laugh.”